Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Things were a little slow today, so I puttered with this a little more. I figured before I went any further with the LED goofiness, I better do the IO plate area....if I screwed this up, the build is ruined/scrapped....so here we go, fingers crossed!

Measured & marked from the corners and lines masked off.




....and rough cut....




test fitted with some random mATX board & IO shield.


Motherboard tray standoffs lined up perfect (yea, I'm that good)!!!




Just for Momaka; properly deburred and edges cleaned!!




3 standoffs that need to be removed...




Now testing the fitment of the 'real mccoy'.... So far so good!








Things will be packed in here tight.....but FWIW, the case breathes well with 2x 120mm fans.




Next is CPU heatsink/fan fitment......I have a set of beefy copper monstrosities here somewhere, height clearances with the PSU cage will be the kryptonite. If they don't fit, I'll have to see if I can find some 1U Dynatron sinks for it that I'm positive will clear.....but until then....

[momaka]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

My ohh my, here we go with another one of these.... I was given a Dell/Alienware Aurora R7 in a junk lot from a local shop. Motherboard bad. CPU & RAM stripped, no HDD's.....but preliminary measurements reveal the X7DCA may fit it....

The moment I saw that PC in your pictures in the Best free/cheap scores thread, I pretty much knew it had to be a special project.

Seems like you're doing quite the mile run here to get it working and looking properly. Great work so far!

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Side panels are done....undoing all the Dell crap was a bigger pain than re-engineering the entire LED setup...

Anyway, all components & harnesses from the Dell PCB's completely stripped off the PCB and set aside...they needed to be used later.



Some of the components & connectors.


The contact plates for the removable side.


The panel itself...


I was never able to identify these chips....they were what appparently controlled the original setup.



Hot glued the LED's to the panel to hold them in place for installation.




Soldered up & resistor...




Power wiring, hot glued into where the original wires ran.


Test light!




Now for the repurposed PCB....I put it back in place, pinning the LED's into place....


Metal panel replaced, wiring ran.




Connected to the contact pad.


Tested again, working!




Same thing to the other panel, minus the contact pad (not needed, this side is stationary by default).




...and done!!




All the scrap!


The front panel beginning....I have some ideas....but until I sort it all, prepwork.


Front panel PCB.


Stripped.




More later...

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Ok, 100% fed up with trying to make that kooky OEM LED setup work. It's non-standard LED's with some kind of unknown controller driving them. Scrapping the entire thing and making my own. Yes, I know....way more effort than it's worth....but what the hell.

This made me really dig into the electronics archive, Ohm's law at it's finest.... I had to dig out the old 'magic circle'..... Anyway:

Some 5mm white LED's. These will be for the side panels.



That's what it'll look like through the refractor.



This will be powered from the 12v rail.



pulling ~ 19mA.


More later.

[ratdude747]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

The 2x boards came today. The seller had 2 left @ $29ea shipped OBO. I offered $20ea for the 2 he had left, and shazam. These were the versions without audio....but being a game rig, that's fine. An Audigy FX will fill the void nicely. I picked up a few of them some time back, some R2 dealer selling them in their boxes for $12 shipped.

Anyway, this is the firs mATX case I've ever seen one of these boardds fit cleanly on the bottom edge....and the first mATX case that this board can fit in and utilize the 32-bit PCI slot.

Not bad!!


Beautiful!


Everything clears on the back edge. No drive cages have to be deleted. There's a couple metal cable hold downs that are part of the motehrboard tray on the back edge that will have to be deleted, and of course some standoffs that need to be modified (standard for these boards), but this is a good fit!

Heatsinks may be a minor challenge, some solid copper 1U or 2U looks to be all that would clear. There's a 120mm fan in the front and anothe 120mm fan in the top, the case should breathe well.




The IO shield is the next big challenge.

If the case has standard Dell audio headers, they did make alienware/XPS Audigy x-fi cards for this. I have one in my dual 940 rig (with a HP-spec'd standard HDA header soldered in place of the dell header). From what I'm seeing a lot of creative cards were made with dell headers... if you got the front audio header cable/jacks,, keep and use them, especially since the case isn't true uATX and supports all 5 slots (which is what makes the PCI slot on the board usable!).

Cheapest compatible X-fi card with the header I can find:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/CREATIVE-SO...AAAOSwxbJe6QEz

Cheapest for what I have personally (and suggest):

https://www.ebay.com/itm/CREATIVE-X-...AAOSw~JRavSas\

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

The 2x boards came today. The seller had 2 left @ $29ea shipped OBO. I offered $20ea for the 2 he had left, and shazam. These were the versions without audio....but being a game rig, that's fine. An Audigy FX will fill the void nicely. I picked up a few of them some time back, some R2 dealer selling them in their boxes for $12 shipped.

Anyway, this is the first uATX case I've ever seen one of these boards fit cleanly on the bottom edge....and the first uATX case that this board can fit in and utilize the 32-bit PCI slot.

Not bad!!


Beautiful!


Everything clears on the back edge. No drive cages have to be deleted. There's a couple metal cable hold downs that are part of the motehrboard tray on the back edge that will have to be deleted, and of course some standoffs that need to be modified (standard for these boards), but this is a good fit!

Heatsinks may be a minor challenge, some solid copper 1U or 2U looks to be all that would clear. There's a 120mm fan in the front and anothe 120mm fan in the top, the case should breathe well.




The IO shield is the next big challenge.

[ChaosLegionnaire]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

in a gaming pc, the primary heat generator would be the gpu so cutting down on the cpu tdp isnt going to do much. i dont agree with your design principle of your wife's gaming pc at all...

[ratdude747]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

This will require some extensive modification....not so much for the fitment of the X7DCA, but rather all the proprietary lighting Dell used on this.... It's kind of dorky for my liking, but I have a 10yr old nephew that would absolutely love this.....to play fortnite of all things....and the X7DCA with a decent GPU will play it gleefully.

My wife plays WOW on my x7DCA... no sweat @ 1080P with a GTX 970. I'm running low voltage CPUs too (due to the case's poor cooling); since you're going into presumably a better cooled case, you might be able to run some hotter chips.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

I did it....the board was toast before. It wasn't intentional....I just handled it a lot and didn't protect the socket, no need....board was a goner (lightning strike).

I was hoping that the motherboard was like brand new.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Looks like the socket was trashed intentionally!

I did it....the board was toast before. It wasn't intentional....I just handled it a lot and didn't protect the socket, no need....board was a goner (lightning strike).

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Looks like the socket was trashed intentionally!

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

It's been hit & miss today with mapping this thing out. These have strange chips (presumably controller IC's) on each of the side panel boards....so I started with finding grounds and poking around with voltage to see what would light or release magic smoke. I didn't release any magic smoke, but I was never able to get things to light reliably. I don't care one iota about color blending/changing....I just want them to illuminate upon powerup....the front panel section I've got mapped, lights working and power button mapped....but those side panels are being fickle. I'll poke around with it more later.....

The entire harness:


The fried motherboard:


Front panel lights....these would be the 'alien head' on the front of the PC.


One of the side panels lit....but I just can't seem to get this to work reliably. Each of those LED banks have 3 LED's in it (red, green, and blue).


Feeding it +12v. 5v won't light them at all. They'll strike around +9v, nice and bright @ +12v.


Now for the case itself.... Completely disassembled.


The IO panel is part of the case. This will have to be completely & precisely removed with a dremel so the correct IO shield will fit. I'll get one shot at this....but I have an idea (more later).




Top panel pieces and one of the sides...




More as this one develops.

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

My ohh my, here we go with another one of these.... I was given a Dell/Alienware Aurora R7 in a junk lot from a local shop. Motherboard bad. CPU & RAM stripped, no HDD's.....but preliminary measurements reveal the X7DCA may fit it....





This will require some extensive modification....not so much for the fitment of the X7DCA, but rather all the proprietary lighting Dell used on this.... It's kind of dorky for my liking, but I have a 10yr old nephew that would absolutely love this.....to play fortnite of all things....and the X7DCA with a decent GPU will play it gleefully.

Anyway....I found a couple of these boards on ebay for $20ea....they aren't here yet....but the stupid part is trying to pin out the LED setup & power button config. It's proprietary to the board and I can't find the schematic/pinout for it....so it'll be trial & error/guesswork attempting this.....

[Per Hansson]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

It's kind of funny, a GTX460 can be had all day long for ~$20 these days...

At the very least, you should be able to run this on it in full details:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...8&postcount=27

Don't get your hopes too high, I have a 780 Ti and a 5820k Haswell CPU but the game is quite slow at times with the settings in attached screenshot:

[momaka]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

^ AWESOME! ^

Looks so modest on the outside, yet a mini powerhouse on the inside. I love it!

A PSU with a 120 mm fan might have worked better, though, as right now the airflow across those wires looks a bit tight... though I'm sure is more than fine.

It's kind of funny, a GTX460 can be had all day long for ~$20 these days...

I know! Isn't that crazy?

The GTX 460 is just a slightly slower, older, and less efficient version of the GTX 560 - and those can still handle some modern games today.

Maybe I should alert you via PMs if I see any other good deals on eBay. Last month or so, I saw several GTX 260/265 cards sell for under $5! (One ended for just what it would cost to ship the card out - i.e. it was nearly free. ) The GTX 200 series are quite dated now for modern games, but still have plenty of power for CAD and 3D rendering.

At the very least, you should be able to run this on it in full details:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...8&postcount=27

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

All done.....I just used what was on-hand as far as memory & GPU. It's kind of funny, a GTX460 can be had all day long for ~$20 these days... I had 8gb of pc2-5300P RAM in the bin and I just ran with that....if there comes a time it needs more or I rehome this thing, I can always add more, it's cheap too....but for now its done.

All assembled....



Butt shot...



YAY, it works....



OS install.....



...and all finished, of course this post created from it...

[Topcat]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Just for those that think I forgot about # 3.....

The case got modded...









More later.

[momaka]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

Beat you to the punch:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=69058

Oh yeah, I forgot that one. (But now that you linked to that thread, I do remember reading it and thinking that's one really cool project.)

That one had a Prescott era celeron in it originally.

I have a similar silver eMachines case from more or less the same era. Was an Athlon XP system, IIRC. Motherboard (FIC AM37) was dead due to a Bestec 250W 12E PSU (along with the keyboard and mouse connected to that system! ) Now that case is retrofitted with my top single-core AMD chip: the Athlon 64 FX-57. But I might move that in another case and have my next main rig built into this eMachines PC. I'm thinking a dual core Athlon 64 with a X2 4200+ and an MSI MS-7184 board I have. (Yes, that's all very old hardware, but I want to keep it DDR1 and maybe try to squeeze a few more years out of Windows XP Pro - as if I haven't enough already. )

[ratdude747]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

But but Compaq and HP are the same thing

You should do an eMachines case, if you have one. The silver ones from the XP/P4/AXP era are really well built. I bet no one would suspect an eMachines will ever have such hardware inside. Just don't be re-using them Bestec ATX-250-12E power supply, haha. (Though the everell 5VSB fix works pretty well on them.)

Beat you to the punch:

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=69058

That one had a Prescott era celeron in it originally.

[momaka]

Re: Dell Dimension 1100? ...or is it? The Ultimate Sleeper System

It's prior to their merger....so it still counts.

Oh fine!



I still expect to see an e-Machines, though.